


Like Kusotori Herself

by beantiger



Category: Hololive, HololiveEN, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Afterlife, Attempt at Humor, Beer, Calli is a drama queen, Calli thinks love is a disease, Crying, Cute, Death, F/F, Gen, Hugs, Mention of self-harm (but not actual), Mythology References, Sick Character, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Underworld, Worldbuilding, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29690577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/beantiger
Summary: She could only think of the Bird. The phoenix. The feather-softness of her hair. The blazing, blooming life in her eyes, which glittered pink and red like new flesh. Kiara, she called herself. Takanashi Kiara...(Kiara holds Calliope's hand for the tee-tee. Calliope thinks the mark she's left is some kind of birb disease. Turns out it's the disease of LOVE.)
Relationships: Mori Calliope/Takanashi Kiara
Comments: 26
Kudos: 180





	1. Visions of Fire and Love

In an underworld apartment at three in the morning, Death’s favorite apprentice composed a half-sober email.

It began:

_Yo (respectfully) sensei,_

_Through a series of events—the details with which I will not bore you—it seems this body has fallen gravely ill. The Bird rudely grabbed my hand yesterday for the “tee tee,” as my Deadbeats call it, and this morning a red mark appeared on my palm. It is about three inches long and hot to the touch, and I think my blood is boiling over with fever._

She crouched over her keyboard, which sat neatly on a dragon’s skull older than the overworld itself. Sweat caked her brow. 

_I had two, shall we say, inquiries about this, oh wise master:_

_
  1. Is this body indeed now dying of some phoenix-to-human transferred disease, and
  2. If so, I believe spare human bodies are on sale on the “Amazon Prime,” which should be available to access on this same allegorical underworld wi-fi. I just bought a new mic, so could you help ya boy (respectfully)?
_ 


__

The apprentice leaned back in her Gamer Girl Chair™, which she’d had the local demons make custom out of human skin. She was an overworld streamer, and a very good one. But fatigue had kept her slow since yesterday. Already, she’d been forced to cancel two streams, all because of that god-damned Bird and whatever plague she’d dumped into this body.

The email finished:

_I figured you might have insight, sensei. And money. The real kind, not the symbolic kind._

_Always in your service,  
Calliope Mori_

_P.S.: I would not buy a new body anywhere else, as they are expensive, and Prime also includes free “two-day shipping.” (I’ve been told humans haven’t yet mastered teleportation: no wonder they invented something as useless as time.)_

Calliope reached over to the Blood Sauvignon she kept beside her monitor, then lay back, her head spinning. It was hard to focus. It was hard to move. The room had grown hot and heavy. She could only think of her coworker, the Bird. The phoenix. The feather-softness of her hair. The blazing, blooming life in her eyes, which glittered pink and red like new flesh.

Kiara, she called herself. Takanashi Kiara.

How Calliope hated her.

***

A fever-dream enveloped her as she slept, swallowing her whole in visions of fire and love, of freedom and light.

Disgusting.

***

She awoke later in the morning, slumped over in her chair.

Dully, the reaper examined her left palm in the flickering light of her desk lamp, feeling as though something within this human body had gone irretrievably out of balance. She didn’t know its medical history—she had borrowed the little meat sack from someone moments away from death by vehicular manslaughter. Was it normal to feel this bad suddenly? Had she simply chosen to inhabit someone very weak?

Nonetheless, Calliope had grown to love this body—had even grown to think of it as _herself._ Reapers existed in a realm far away from the physical, and she never had an “appearance,” so to speak, before coming to the overworld six months prior. (Indeed, even the human concept of gender still confused her.) It was easy to enjoy the attention that came with being beautiful and present in a way Death-sensei had never been.

Also, she could punch bitches.

Plainly put: Calliope Mori did not want to lose this body to a magical avian illness.

With one black fingernail, she traced the red mark. It looked shallowly embedded in the skin. A kitchen knife could carve it out, but she didn’t want her Deadbeats asking about a potential injury. Especially not one that looked self-inflicted.

Plus, she had a feeling it would simply come back, this mark. She had a feeling it was _permanent,_ it was _deadly,_ deadlier than she. She had the sensation of incoming oblivion, as if her entire self would—

God, how this body was so prone to panic.

She ground her teeth to calm herself.

One part of her thought, in an ancient language beyond language: _That bird seeks to destroy me with disease? Me, the end of all things? Me, who will usher the very universe to completion?_

Yet a current part of her thought: _Okay but holy shit if this body dies it may be the first time a Hololive girl has ever murdered a Hololive girl. Have fun with that, internet._

She went to YouTube. She canceled another stream. She put her aching head down on her desk and wanted to die. 

Symbolically speaking.

_Respond to your mother-f-wording emails, Sensei._

***

Her cellphone purred within arm’s reach. Calliope glanced at it.

Ah, a Homie of hers—a young Atlantean. A fellow overworld streamer. A coworker she appreciated…

_**[GURA:]** hey queen. maybe it’s chicken pox_  
_**[GURA:]** (this is not a joke)_  
_**[GURA:]** like that body probably doesn’t have its vaccines or anything_  
_**[GURA:]** hololive like made me get a bunch when i came on land_  
_**[GURA:]** i said i got my rabies booster a few centuries ago but they were like no no no_  
_**[GURA:]** land is gross_

...though perhaps not one whose intellect she trusted.

It wasn’t chicken pox, nor measles, nor any other simmering, shimmering, delicious virus. Calliope knew those minuscule beings very well. Like old friends, even. The way they burned up bodies with heat and filth, rocketing souls into the dark. Ah! She even knew their hues, their individual palettes, the shades of crimson and black they produced on human skin.

This was something else entirely. 

A red like flame, a red like the color of _kusotori's_ —well, like _kusotori_ herself.

***

Afternoon, now. The apprentice still hadn’t moved from her Gamer Girl Chair™.

Wait—

Mail. She needed to get the mail. The _real_ mail.

Calliope dragged herself to her front door, her entire being sagging like a salted slug. The rot-dressed air of the underworld immediately greeted her. Below, a crate no wider than a piece of paper sat on her doormat. It didn’t have a return address. It didn’t have any markings on it at all.

She nudged it inside. What more could anyone do to her, to a sick goddess, the daughter of Death itself?

Thankfully, the crate easily opened under her weakened fingers. She gazed down, her sight doubling, tripling. Staring had become very difficult, but she knew what she had received: a single can of beer, silver in color.

The label read:

_DEATH’S DOOR_  
_For in this sleep of death_  
_What dreams may come._

Against her palm—her infected palm—the aluminum was cool.

On one hand, Calliope knew she shouldn’t have touched anything from her mail that her manager didn’t give her. On the other, this body of hers was dying and she might as well speed it along.

The can opened with a beautiful _crack._ She drank. She crawled back into her chair.

She closed her eyes.

***

In her dream, Death-sensei explained everything.

The explanation was a shitty one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking some liberties with these characters and their mythology. I mean, Calli is both a Western-style reaper and a shinigami, as well as an aspect of death and a being that somehow went to high school and had parents, so I'm just gonna try to melt it down into coherent lore.
> 
> Generally I only write original fiction, but I love these ladies. I'll try to update weekly or biweekly until this is done.
> 
> Please feel free to share this with other Takamori shippers/Hololive fans! Or with the girls themselves if they're into fanfic. (Though don't harass them if not.)


	2. The Mortals Might Call You Soulmates

They rode atop pale horses, master and apprentice. Beyond them stretched Zerzura—an underworld desert bereft of all color, its dunes soft, its winds as gentle and cool as decay. It was a place that always looked pristine to Calliope. Clean and pure, like shin bones. She used to play in Zerzura all the time as a young reaper, donning a demonic sheriff’s badge and...

A voice shimmered next to her ear.

 _Ah, little one. It is always a joy to hear from you._ Next to her, on a softly trotting mare, Death-sensei tipped its cowboy hat. Beneath the hat’s leather rim, Death’s empty eye sockets twinkled with amusement. _Although I must say, you are the most dramatic of my avatars. Not even Santa Muerte gives me so much trouble._

Calliope _was_ Death-sensei. She was Death’s facets, too: Hades and Hel and, yes, Santa Muerte. She was also Death’s apprentice, and her own person. It was very complicated, though it had made more sense before she took on the body—and mind—of a human. 

In simple mortal terms, she considered Death-sensei something like a revered ancestor. Or even a parent, if she stretched the idea a little. Either way, Death-sensei was easy to respect, because she respected herself.

Right now, though, her master was being a pain in the ass.

“Sensei, wise one—I’m you, you’re me, etcetera etcetera. You must understand my reasons to not lose that body,” Calliope said.

_I do very well, Sheriff._

“What. Uh. Let’s not make fun of me,” Calliope responded, blushing briefly. “My mortal body doesn’t have a lot of time—and yes, I know we’re in a place without time, and in fact this is all an allegory and none of this is physically happening, and you’re really just having a conversation with yourself i.e. me, but I need your answer about the phoenix-borne disease, Sensei. ”

The pair and their steeds continued along into dusty nothingness. From above them chimed—birdsong? Squinting under her own spike-adorned cowboy hat, Calliope gazed up. Yes. Doves. Doves so white they looked like soaring, circling beings of glass. Zerzura had never had anything like that before.

 _First,_ Death-sensei said, _that body isn’t dying. It isn’t even ill. That part is all in your head. You and your sister Muerte! One small change in your non-existence and you’re ready to fall to pieces. But I cannot blame you._

“I’m not ill?—er, the body won’t die?”

_No, little one. The mark is—ah, come here, come here._

They pulled their horses closer. Death-sensei reached out one bony digit. Calliope provided her infected palm. Her master traced its finger along the outline of the little red mark, and—though Death generally presented itself in the form of an animated skeleton—its rigid, toothy grin seemed sincere. In fact, Death-sensei positively radiated joy.

Calliope didn’t like that at all.

“Sensei, you could have told me that up front,” Calliope said. “This is all very much not sicknasty of you.”

_Little one, if I manifested anywhere near you on a physical plane, all of reality would collapse. That’s why I let you exist. You allow me to have fun. Experience life. Just a bit. Don’t you think this mark looks like a feather?_

The doves above continued to coo and cry.

 _Death and life twine together. As the fingers of lovers._ Death-sensei drew its hand back and fixed its skull’s-head at the sky. _I had a feeling you had finally met your phoenix when the doves started appearing here in Zerzura. There are some forces of nature even—_

“—we cannot hold.”

_Yes. We were not the first entities, you know. At the Big Bang, before you and I and your, ah...siblings, there was Being._

The mark on Calliope’s palm began to throb with heat, and the image of _kusotori_ erupted within her mind. That beautiful, ridiculous, idiot bird. Calliope willed the vision away, but it pulsed with exuberance and color, as if it might spring forth from her. She closed her eyes. She opened them again. 

Before her swirled an apparition of sand in the shape of Kiara. 

Death-sensei continued: _But if there’s Being, there must be Unbeing. And so: life and death. Always._

The sand-Kiara grinned, standing up on the tips of her toes.

 _Life is true, eternal beauty, in its purest essence,_ Death-sensei explained. _Possibility. Potential. Life, in short, has always been attractive to me because it is not me. And Life always returned the feeling. But we could not love each other. It would be rather like dividing by zero. However...I knew smaller parts of me might come to love Life, and the universe would allow it._

Understanding dawned on Calliope suddenly. Understanding and—fear. 

“I know what you’re getting at, likely because, as mentioned, you and I are the same concept technically, but I really, extremely don’t want to—”

_You, little one, and your phoenix: the mortals might call you soulmates, except you have no soul, and phoenixes are souls. Still, your love for each other is written into the very code of this world._

A single word echoed through Calliope’s thoughts: _no. _No and no and no. It rang out with hateful clarity. Yet she knew she couldn’t ignore the truth. The mark on her hand did, indeed, look like a feather. A phoenix feather. To reject that would be foolish. She did not suffer fools.__

__“Life’s also a god,” Calliope said. Her voice dampened to a small, childish tone, and she wound her fingers into her horse’s milky mane. “And phoenixes are like we shinigami and demons and reapers. I’m a little part of you. Kiara’s a little part of Life.”_ _

_That mark on your palm is the universe’s way of saying, ‘Ah, I’ll allow it.’ Your Kiara understands this, which is likely why she is so...pushy._ Death-sensei’s expression held affection as he watched the Bird’s mirage. _Find a way to love Life, my Calliope, because I cannot._

“One issue, master: I don’t love _kusotori._ Never f-wording did, never f-wording will.” 

__The Kiara of dust and wind dispersed._ _

_You do because I do. You cannot deny your very core,_ said Death-sensei. 

__Her very core._ _

__Calliope looked within herself._ _

__In her core, underneath a trillion years of shadow and duty, she found blood and frost and Death itself. She found music and the subtle, yet inescapable, power of her own words. She found the overworld, and Hololive, and the strange happiness she’d discovered among her coworkers. She found her Deadbeats, who would all fight to carry her burdens, just as she would fight to carry theirs. She uncovered a love for herself and a love for the natural order of the universe, and a love for—_ _

__Takanashi Kiara, because—_ _

That _was_ the natural order of the universe. 

With a wild _guh,_ Calliope turned her mount away from her master, walking in a direction she sensed would take her back to the waking world. “Sorry not sorry, Sensei. I can’t. I won’t. With all due respect, you ought to play your Romeo and Juliet game elsewhere, in some other reality, with one of your other reapers.” 

__The doves’ calls had heightened to a terrible, raucous pitch. Even above the noise, however, she could hear Death’s laughter._ _

_Go now to your phoenix, little one! You’ll come to understand it all. Yeehaw!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mythology!
> 
> I have a headcanon that none of Calliope's "young reaper" memories actually happened, and Death-sensei put them in her mortal mind to fill up the empty space of eternity. Or maybe they're a conglomerate of her interests and those of the person that USED to inhabit her body. Still, it's fun to think about a tiny Calliope playing cowboy out in an underworld desert. If it's real to her, it's real to me.
> 
> Also: a bit hard to get a handle on our favorite reaper's dialogue since it has wildly varied since the beginning of her streams, and can even wildly vary WITHIN a stream, but we tryin'.
> 
> One more chapter and I think we're done.


	3. All This Time, Millions of Years

In an underworld apartment at twelve o’clock noon, Death’s favorite apprentice had passed out drunk on her bathroom floor. Distantly, someone called out to her.

***

A hand fluttered against Calliope’s back—open-palmed, fingers spread. It traced gentle lines across her shoulderblades.

Calliope hadn’t given up. The opposite, actually. She had simply decided that her current circumstances were unacceptable. Yes. She’d figured out a course of action and taken it: she didn’t want this existence, and so she refused it. That wasn’t _giving up._ That was fighting back, in its own way.

If only she could remember what she had refused.

She lie face down against the tile.

A voice called her name once more. It sounded as if someone had lost themselves in a dark place looking for her. Someone small and frail. Bird-like.

***

Time passed. Who knew how long? Who cared? Certainly not she.

Calliope rolled over and dared to open her eyes. From a squatting position, a bird—the Bird—stared back at her, her gaze dim with worry. Just like a _kusotori_ to peck at things on the ground, even in a human shape.

Abruptly, the memory of Calliope’s dream returned to her. Nailed her, actually. A headbutt to the gut. A sucker punch to the jaw. Love. Life. Her entire being, her entire unbeing, had become a sign on some middle-aged mother’s door. All because of this f-wording bird.

She propped herself up on her elbows.

“You,” Calliope said. “You’re the one who’s made me _weak._ How dare you—”

“I took an Uber from the overworld,” Kiara replied, as if that explained everything. Under her breath she mumbled some German curse. “Cost a lot. I’m going to bill it to the company, I think. Business expense!—But how are you, Calli? I put curry for you in the fridge, next to those Tupperware containers of, um, oni liver and radioactive waste—”

“When were you going to tell me about your little plot?”

Kiara tilted her head to one side. She looked like a moron, but then, she always did. In a sense, her predictability carried comfort with it. “I was worried, Calli. Everyone said you were sick, and I’d never seen you go silent in the Discord, and you canceled all those streams…”

“Who let you in my apartment?”

“The door was unlocked. I thought you were murdered or something.”

Not possible, of course—as a reaper, Calliope would have seen such a thing lifetimes before it ever happened. And even if, by some cosmic string of bad luck, a mortal got the jump on her—well, she could just find a new body.

It’d certainly sadden her to lose this one, though. She liked it. The Deadbeats liked it. _Kusotori_ liked it. Kiara always needed to touch her, to feel her skin, to...

Calliope’s head throbbed. She supposed she _was_ only hungover. That was one part about mortality that she despised: all vices came with their B.S. Normally she could handle one beer, but, well—maybe not when said beer was a can of magical, allegorical dream-booze from her master.

At least she got to keep this pink-haired, pretty little meatshell.

“I ought to stuff you in a microwave,” Calliope replied.

“Only if you eat me after—”

“You’ve gone all this time, _all this time,_ being my friend—I use that term extremely loosely, by the way—and never told me that we were bound by some eternal fate of the whatever.”

Calliope held up her marked palm. Kiara ran her thumbs over the rash, or whatever it was. The touch felt intensely correct in every way—prompting Calliope to pull her hand back again with a _guh._

In her immortal existence as an aspect of Death, she’d guided countless souls to their rightful place in the underworld. Some had died so quickly—a brain aneurysm here, a heart attack there, an anvil to the skull over yonder—that their ghosts simply gaped at her in confusion when she appeared to lead them into the dark. You could almost hear the quiz show theme music tooting in the background, watching their little faces try to put basic math together. 

At present, Kiara wore that same expression. Clearly, the gears were a-turning.

“I thought you knew,” Kiara squawked. “Oh my God. I thought you were just being mean about it to be funny.”

The Deadbeats—and Kiara’s fans, whatever the hell she called them—often put together compilations on YouTube of their shared content. All the times Kiara pushed her affections for Calliope a little too far. Of Calliope’s “tsundere” reactions to Kiara’s irritating crush. And their shared _tee-tee,_ the streams in which Calliope had genuinely complimented her, the moments Calliope looked into her eyes and thought: _Alright. Ya boy can see it. Sort-of._

Kiara shook her head slowly. “That’s so much to handle all at once—my mom told me when I was very young…I thought you knew and—I’m so sorry. All this time—”

“Yeah. All this time. Millions of years.”

Calliope supposed it wasn’t the Bird’s fault. It was just like her to assume. But you couldn’t stay mad, because Kiara had the attention span of a small dog. If you rubbed her nose in her mistakes, she’d forget them immediately. She was innocent that way.

Smooth-brained, liquid-brained, pea-brained bird. A negative IQ would have been too high for her.

“I don’t know what to say,” Kiara said. “Do you want a hug, Calli?” 

The reaper relented.

And the fit was perfect. Calliope couldn’t deny it, which was perhaps why she avoided hugging _kusotori_ for too long, or too often. Their bodies meshed breast to breast, shoulder to shoulder; the Bird’s head was tucked under her chin, against her neck. It felt good in a basic, primal way, like sitting near a low fire after a day in the mountains.

Each of Calliope’s nerve endings seemed to stir to life. She breathed in Kiara’s scent: salt and flame and something floral that Calliope couldn’t identify. As correct as it was for Calliope to take human life, this, too, was correct. Takanashi Kiara was _correct._ She could not deny her very core, her painful, weakening need for this creature in her arms. Her master had told her so. 

“Are you crying?” the Bird piped in.

“I want to murder everyone,” the reaper said. 

Kiara held up her hands in front of Calliope’s cheeks. Calliope huffed her consent, and Kiara wiped away the tears with her wrists.

“You always tell me not to be whiny, and here you are…”

“Shut up. I’ll start the murder with you.”

The Bird twittered a quick laugh: _tee hee hee._ Calliope pulled her in tighter, burying her face into her neck. She wept with relief and adoration and emptiness, her body pure of all hatred, like _kusotori_ herself.

***

There was a lot of kissing after that. Nothing more. The reaper needed time to reconfigure her worldview, to get used to all of this...weakness. Or, rather, to stop seeing it as weakness, and begin seeing it the way Death-sensei had. A code. A key to a mystery she didn’t know she needed to solve.

For a while, they both lie on the bathroom floor together, exhausted with emotion, listening to the fluorescent lighting above them chatter. 

“You don’t have a mark, though,” Calliope said. She stared at the feather on her palm, which seemed to glitter in red and green-blue. “Doesn’t seem fair.”

Kiara pulled down her eyelids. “I do! You noticed it a long time ago. The skulls in my eyes, see? Or—what did you call them? ‘Skrellingtons?’” 

“Look. Listen. I have a verbal tic. Don’t make fun of me. I’m breaking up with you.”

***

Realities away, in the underworld desert of Zerzura, coos fell over an oasis where a pale mare had come to drink. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that. Thank you for reading, y'all. I really appreciate it! Words cannot encompass my gratitude.
> 
> Like I said, please feel free to share this fic around if you liked it. I will be writing more Hololive EN stuff!


End file.
